Shooting hummingbirds

[HungLikeJesus]

I don't know much about hummingbirds, but we've had a feeder up for a few years. I've taken a few pictures of them in the past, like:



This weekend I decided to get a few more pictures, so I spent the evening hunting hummingbirds. I started out inside, shooting through the open screen door, with a 70mm lense:



Then I borrowed my wife's 300 mm lense and got this shot:



Then I started getting closer. I think that this is a male, based on the neck color:



This is shot at 1/100 of a second. You can get an idea of how fast these birds can move:



I decided to try the flash, which results in a better picture. I think that this one is a female. Notice the different color of the neck:



The flash startled this male. He and I both moved. I'm only including it because I like the lack of definition. It looks like an explosion of feathers:



These next few came out very clear, especially in the full-size originals (6MP). I was probably shooting at about three feet from the feeder.









This next one is interesting because it shows how fast the wing movement is. The shutter speed is 1/60 second with flash, but you can see that the wing makes at least one full flap in that time:



This one is without flash, 1/30 second, but is still fairly steady.



Another without flash and 1/30 second:



Here's the male sitting on a branch. It's not as dark as this picture makes it appear:





This one is my favorite of the night shots. It looks much better at full resolution compared to this:



I look forward to pictures of hummingbirds that others might post.

P.S. I'm using a photo site called Fotki to host these images. This is the maximum resolution available for shared photos.
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